My name is Nils and I’m currently doing an ESC volunteering mission in Türkiye. I’ve been here for 3 months now and these are my thoughts:
So far it has been an amazing experience. I love the generous people, I really like the food and I have fun doing my workshops here.


I do English and German conversation clubs and sometimes I look after kids.
The people in my workshops are very motivated and pleasant to be around. Some of the attendees have even become my friends and I meet with them in my free time.My conversation club in the office of Pi Youth Association in Konak is always fun and the people are between the age of 20 and 30.Sometimes we actually just talk like a friend group and we don’t even need to do the activities I had planned.


Another conversation club I have is in Bornova in a disabled people center. There, the participants age range goes from 16 to 70, but still, the group has great harmony which I really like. Workshops with kids can be a bit draining from time to time but it taught me that I like being around kids more than I would have expected. They are respectful and we manage to communicate even though we don’t speak the same language.
Communicating with limited language skills is definitely a quality I had to learn here: for example, when I was shopping for groceries or other things, but so far it always went good. From my experience, most people here are patient when it comes to foreigners., The food is awesome here. I tasted many new things I really like. My favorite so far is definitely Lahmacun and I’m excited to try many other new things. All in all, I am very pleased with my decision to do my ESC volunteering mission in Türkiye. I’m really looking forward to the next months I will spend here, especially because the summer is coming now. My stay here also gave me even more motivation to visit other countries. I’m grateful for all the cool experiences and the new friends I made.